


Ornament

by tolakasa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes throwing things away doesn't work.  Post 5.16 "Dark Side of the Moon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ornament

The damn thing keeps coming back.

He threw it away.  He _knows_ he threw it away.  He felt Sam’s confusion and pain from across the room when he dropped that worthless hunk of brass into the trash can.

And the next time he pulled a shirt out of his bag, the damn thing came tumbling out, cord and all.

At first, he thought Sam had retrieved it, the sentimental idiot, so he tossed it again.  Just to be sure.  In a trash can in a public restroom.

The next morning it’s wrapped around his toothbrush.  And doesn’t _that_ make for an awkward conversation.  But Sam’s adamant:  He didn’t do it.  And Dean’s pretty sure Sam didn’t get out of the car at that particular pit stop.

Maybe Cas is having another crisis of conscience.  Even for an angel, it can’t be healthy to keep flipping back and forth like that, believing one minute, doubting the next.

He ignores the hurt in Sam’s eyes when he throws it out the Impala’s window later that night.  How long does Sam expect him to act like nothing’s changed, anyway?  They’re not what they were.  They never will be.  The damn thing is just a painful reminder.

Three days later, he finds it the hard way: when he’s putting his shoes on.  He stubs his toe so hard he limps for an hour.

The next time Cas shows up, he yells at him without waiting for an explanation.  Cas is confused.  Not by the yelling, but by the reason.  “Why would I do that?” he asks, so bewildered that Dean knows he’s not lying.  This isn’t the angel’s doing.

He tosses it in a fire.

He throws it in a lake.

He stuffs it in a church’s poor box.

Nothing works.

Just what he needs.  Pranks in the middle of the fucking Apocalypse.  When he figures out who’s doing this—when he has _time_ to figure out who’s doing this—

Remembering relics they’ve come across that wouldn’t stay gone until they’re _given_ away, he gives it to a homeless guy.

While they’re asking questions at a pawnshop, a box on a high shelf turns over, spilling its junky guts all over him, and everything else flutters to the floor but the damn thing winds up resting neatly on his head, the cord flopping in his eyes. The owner is so embarrassed that she boxes it up right then and there and makes him take it as some kind of half-assed apology.

It’s good to hear Sam laugh.  Not that that excuses anything about this ridiculous situation.  Or the sore spot on the top of his skull.

He tries one more time, telling a scared little kid that it will keep the monsters away.  Giving is complicated in the magical world; maybe it needs a purpose behind the giving.

It’s dangling on the Impala’s rear-view mirror the day after they leave town.  Sam just gives him a look, like he thinks _Dean_ put it there, like Dean hasn’t been trying to get rid of the damn thing.

So he stuffs it in a pocket of his duffel, a pocket that zips shut.  Not like that’s going to stop it if it really wants out, apparently, but it’s all he’s got time for right now.  He for _damned_ sure isn’t wearing it again.

The feeling that something is missing from around his neck, hanging over his heart, something _important_.... 

That was all in his head.

And the fact that that feeling disappears the instant that zipper’s zipped?

That’s all in his head, too.


End file.
